Yellow

Yellow Optimises Search and Generates 35% Uplift in Conversions

Marin Software’s reporting and filtering gave insight into revenue-driving categories

Turned this insight into actions by using Marin Software automated bidding algorithm

Saw a 35% uplift in conversions within three months

OVERVIEW

Know what you want but not sure where to find it? Yellow® will help you find it. More than two million New Zealanders use a Yellow® product every week to find what they’re looking for. Need a Thai restaurant near you that’s open on a Monday or need a moving company you can trust with your wedding china? Yellow® can help you find it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year.

CHALLENGE

Yellow® had a large-scale search campaign with nearly 2,000 categories on their site, more than half a million keywords, more than 30,000 different ad units and 15,000 ad groups. Managing campaigns at this scale manually was time consuming, but the scale of the campaign wasn’t the only challenge—it was also very complex.

Yellow® had multiple conversion types, which added an additional layer of complexity. If a visitor came through Google search looking for a plumber, he would visit the category page for plumbers and then click on a business listing. This would be seen as a conversion within Adwords. However, there were deeper conversions, such as when a visitor to the listing clicks on the supplier’s phone number, visits their website or contacts them by email. These conversions were being tracked in Omniture. So, Yellow® were manually stitching this data together from Adwords and Omniture in spreadsheets, which was taking a lot of time and restricting insight into the performance of different categories.

Yellow® was spreading its budget widely to maintain volume of conversions and to deliver a return on investment for their advertisers. Conversion targets were high and the due to the other challenges of running a campaign at this scale, the team at Yellow® knew there was a better way to spend their budget and exceed their conversation targets.

Before using Marin Software we had a hunch we weren’t making the most of the budget we had available. As a result we were struggling to hit out conversion targets. After rolling out Marin Software across our campaigns we could quickly digest the data and turn that insight into optimisation actions. We can now understand which parts of our campaign are driving revenue for our business and increase budgets in those areas accordingly. Ultimately, Marin has given us the ability to hit our conversion targets which in turn increases the value to our advertisers.”

-Jonathan Swanston / Search Marketing Analyst / Yellow®

SOLUTION

During a robust vendor process, Yellow® reviewed three digital ad management platforms to ascertain which would best help them to manage their search campaigns. They selected Marin Software because the platform had the functionality required to manage their large scale campaigns and it offered the service and support to maximise the potential of the platform. After a smooth on boarding process, Yellow® could see all their Google Adwords and Omniture data seamlessly stitched together when they arrived in the office every morning.

After eliminating the manual effort required to stitch data together, the Yellow® team were able to shift their focus and utilise Marin Software’s reporting and filtering capabilities to hone in on the highest-impact campaign elements. Previously Yellow® had spread their budget across varying campaigns with differing performance, however, they were now able to easily identify the areas of their search campaign that were driving the best results for their clients and revenue for their business. This meant they could spend their budget in a more informed way, by increasing budget in areas of their campaign which were driving revenue.

To meet their aggressive conversion targets, Yellow® relied on Marin Software’s predictive bidding capabilities, which combine the power of algorithmic automation with flexible user controls required to adapt bids based on Yellow’s complex business requirements. As a result, Yellow® could maximise performance based on their multiple conversion points.

RESULTS

As a result of using the Marin Software platform, Yellow® started exceeding their conversion targets and spending their budget more efficiently than in the past. They quickly saw performance improvements and within two months of using the platform Yellow® saw a conversion uplift of 35% .